Ancient Greek oral traditions got geology right

[Viggen]

In the first century AD, a Greek geographer and historian named Strabo noted that a peninsula just south of Athens called Piraeus had, at one time in the past, been an island. It's unusual for landforms to change so quickly that humans can take notice, even over generations, so that's a pretty interesting claim. The idea pops up elsewhere in Athenian oral tradition, as well as in the etymology of the name itself ("peran" means "beyond" or "on the other side"), so a group of French and Greek geologists and archaeologists decided to put it to the test....

 

...read the full article at ARSTechnica

[Klingan]

Very interesting, I'll try to find the passage they're talking about. But I wish that they would just leave a reference?

[Viggen]

...here more to the story from Discovery

 

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/06/07/ancient-greek-knew-geology-thousands-of-years-before-his-time/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+80beats+%2880beats%29

[Maty]

A further point of interest is that the Greek tradition that Beotian Thebes was founded beside a shallow lake. This lake had vanished by historical times, but modern studies have shown that this was indeed the case.

[Klingan]

A further point of interest is that the Greek tradition that Beotian Thebes was founded beside a shallow lake. This lake had vanished by historical times, but modern studies have shown that this was indeed the case.

 

I had no clue. Would you have a reference? It sounds like something I ought to taking a look at.

[Maty]

A further point of interest is that the Greek tradition that Beotian Thebes was founded beside a shallow lake. This lake had vanished by historical times, but modern studies have shown that this was indeed the case.

 

I had no clue. Would you have a reference? It sounds like something I ought to taking a look at.

 

 

This was something I read while researching a book on Greek myth. It was an article considering the legend of Cadmus slaying the Ismenian water-dragon as a distorted version of the draining of aforesaid lake (presumably a branch of Lake Copias or Yliki?)

 

It must have been published within the last four years, as I can't find it on JSTOR.

[Melvadius]

According to Answers.com

 

Quoting the Oxford Companion to Classical Literature: Boe?tia it states:

 

Boe?tia, country of central Greece, bordering Attica on the north-west. Its two main cities were Orchomenus and Thebes, and it possessed the two famous mountains of Cithaeron and Helicon. In classical times much of the northern plain where Orchomenus stood was covered by the shallow Lake Cop?is (now drained). The land was occupied from Neolithic times onward and was clearly important in the Bronze Age. Mycenaean remains at Orchomenus and myths about the wealth of the Minyae who migrated there from Thessaly suggest that this city was older than Thebes, but the rise of the latter and the flooding of Lake Copais contributed to its decline.

 

Most Boeotian myth centres on the city of Thebes (see CADMUS, HERACLES, OEDIPUS), whose power at any one time determined the importance of Boeotia's role in the history of the period. Thebes was never strong enough, however, to enforce its authority over all the cities of Boeotia and combine them into one state. The fourth century saw the extension of Theban supremacy over the rest of Boeotia, particularly Sparta at Leuctra in 371 and again at Mantinea in 362. Like the rest of Greece, however, Boeotia could not resist the rise of Macedon under Philip II, and after the defeat of Theban and Athenian forces at Chaeronea in 338 and the destruction of Thebes in 335 by Philip's son (Alexander the Great) Boeotia rapidly declined. In Roman times nothing remained of most Boeotian cities except their ruins and their names.

 

To the Athenians particularly the Boeotians seemed dull and thick-witted, a condition which Cicero and Horace ascribed to the dampness of the atmosphere. It seems true that Boeotia was backward artistically, but its contribution to music and literature was considerable: Hesiod, Corinna, Pindar, and Plutarch were all Boeotians. The dialect in the classical period was Aeolic, as spoken in Lesbos and Thessaly, but had some features in common with west Greek and a vowel-system peculiar to itself.

 

 

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/boeotia#ixzz1PF8ahGBO

NB the '?' appearing in the text above is because in the original the second 'o' in 'Boeotia' and the 'a' in 'Copais' have a 'diacritic' bar above them indicating a long vowel which the forum software doesn't print.